Seeing Obama in Manchester, NH this past Saturday...
The husband, Mr. Purple, and I went up to New Hampshire for a friend's wedding and we stayed at the in-laws. We drove up early Friday morning and the wedding wasn't until Saturday night so my father-in-law thought we might want to go watch Obama speak in the morning 20 minutes down the road... wait a second, Obama was speaking 20 minutes down the road the following morning?... we forgot New Hampshire was a swing state... um, yeah, we'd like to go. So with that, we, with about 7,000 others, filed into a park to watch Obama speak... and boy did he. For all of those nail bitting Dems out there who are fretting over the polls and worried about Obama not takin' it McCain and Palin, I have some firsthand reporting: relax. Yeah it's tight but we've still got almost two months to go and I was very pleased with Obama's tack, his delivery and the diversity of the crowd watching.
First of all, I noticed a particular spring in his step and forcefulness in his speaking that I was wondering beforehand if I would see... and I did. He went after McCain on the issues, not character attacks such as the ones lobbed at Obama. He brought a sobering reality to the issues he laid out while contrasting the positions taken on those issues by McCain versus his own positions. The only problem is that on the news, taken out of context and in snippets, Obama's speech and his speaking style might go over some voter's heads. But if he continues presenting the voters with the stark choices he did on Saturday, I believe he will win out. I also noticed that the crowd was very diverse... old and young, preppy and scrunchy, all ethnicities... this was good to see as well.
Lastly, I really like how Barack contrasted with specifis the change argument coming from McCain compared to his belief of what change really is when set in context of the last eight years. Obama also ridiculed McCain for the funny notion that McCain is running away from the lobbyists while his top campaign managers and advisers are lobbyists... just doesn't make sense. The Obama camp would do well to string together the highlights of this stump speech into .30 and .60 second spots... if enough people watch those snippets, I believe the polls will swing back in his direction. Below is a pic... pretty good seats if you ask me.
UPDATE: Below is the video of the speech I saw...
First of all, I noticed a particular spring in his step and forcefulness in his speaking that I was wondering beforehand if I would see... and I did. He went after McCain on the issues, not character attacks such as the ones lobbed at Obama. He brought a sobering reality to the issues he laid out while contrasting the positions taken on those issues by McCain versus his own positions. The only problem is that on the news, taken out of context and in snippets, Obama's speech and his speaking style might go over some voter's heads. But if he continues presenting the voters with the stark choices he did on Saturday, I believe he will win out. I also noticed that the crowd was very diverse... old and young, preppy and scrunchy, all ethnicities... this was good to see as well.
Lastly, I really like how Barack contrasted with specifis the change argument coming from McCain compared to his belief of what change really is when set in context of the last eight years. Obama also ridiculed McCain for the funny notion that McCain is running away from the lobbyists while his top campaign managers and advisers are lobbyists... just doesn't make sense. The Obama camp would do well to string together the highlights of this stump speech into .30 and .60 second spots... if enough people watch those snippets, I believe the polls will swing back in his direction. Below is a pic... pretty good seats if you ask me.
UPDATE: Below is the video of the speech I saw...
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